Who is to blame? Oxytocin promotes nonpersonalistic attributions in response to a trust betrayal

Recent research revealed that the neuropeptide Oxytocin (OT) increases and maintains trustful behavior, even towards interaction partners that have proven to be untrustworthy. However, the cognitive mechanisms behind this effect are unclear. In the present paper, we propose that OT might boost trust through the link between angry rumination and the use of nonpersonalistic and personalistic attributions. Nonpersonalistic attributions put the blame for the betrayal on the perpetrator's situation, whereas personalistic attributions blame his dispositions for the event. We predict that OT changes attribution processes in favor of nonpersonalistic ones and thereby boosts subsequent trust. Participants played a classic trust game in which the opponent systematically betrayed their trust. As predicted, OT strengthened the relationship between angry rumination about the event and nonpersonalistic attribution of the opponents' behavior and weakened the link between angry rumination and personalistic attribution. Critically, nonpersonalistic attribution also mediated the interactive effect of OT and angry rumination on how strongly investments were reduced in the remaining rounds of the trust game. In summary, the present findings suggest that one underlying cognitive mechanism behind OT-induced trust might relate to how negative emotions evoked by a breach of trust influence the subsequent attributional analysis: OT seems to augment trust by fostering the interpretation of untrustworthy behavior as caused by non-personal factors. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.